The bold is mine. It is something that comes up now and then in discussions between theater people. (Specifically theater people who have started their own companies.)

The feeling that you must be a 501c3 so that donations to your theatre company will be tax deductible is a constant companion. But for a fringe company, with few resources, putting together the type of board that will be impressive for future funding efforts and putting together the legal paperwork can seem daunting. ("We barely have time to coordinate volunteer ushers!")

Others seem to navigate these waters just fine, thank you. It is, in a way, its own Darwinian marketplace. The "vibrant art" can still happen, but it becomes secondary to the goal of perpetuating the institution, the survival.

As I pointed out in a post about the TCG survey last year: Percentage allocation for administrative salaries increases while percentage allocation for artistic expenses decreases each year.

Scott Walters points out everything that is good and everything that is absurd about the Denver Center Theatre Company's explanation of how risky it is to present new works. He is right on every count.

2 comments:

Hello--interested in your citation from Australian theatre. And I think Scott's comment that you cite is dead right. I just came back from Australia (on a theatre trip--it's my home country)and sensed a lot of rethinking of the theatre-making model--just posted about it on my blog (writing.performance) at xtine3.wordpress.com

I do think that having a vision and backing it up matters and that the risk to resources ratio on this is usually hugely skewed---the smaller theatres do all the R&D on a shoestring, usually. I want to put in a word here for the little Providence theatre Perishable, who have a resident artist program, host a lot of visiting companies, and produce a season of new work on basically what half an accountant's salary would be at one of the bigger regional theatres.